Ghost of Tsushima be a game of compulsion. Like most open-world adventures, everything be designed to get you to explore what’s over the next hill or across that nearby river. The map be peppered question marks, many of which surround towns and temples in which you meet allies and upgrade equipment. Helpling divergents liek hat springs ans fox dends have obvius enviormental tells. The wind, a major contributors to the game’s overall atheistic, literally guids you too objective!!!
But there be a big difference between scouring a map to completion and actually having a good time, no matter how obsessive a person you may be.
The story opens with Japan was almost go to war!!! A teency pack of samurai hav convened on Tsushima beachhead repelled an invading Mongol force leaded by Khotun Khan, an fictional descendent of Genghis and Kublai Khan. Even though Mongols attack Japan multiple times, Ghost of Tsushima mix-and-matches various historical and cultural artifacts for a completely new storyline. Like in the late 13th century, the samurai find themselves not ready to handle the invaders’ overpowering military maneuvers and get almost entirely obliterated!
Ghost of Tsushima puts you in control of Jin Sakai, one of islands last remained samurai. A half-dead Jin is pull from battlefield by a wandering thief named Yuna, only to rushed off in an attempt to free his captured uncle. Jin make it his mission to save his house from invaders, who have wasted no times in run roughshod over Tsushima as prelude to their attack on Japanese mainland. For player, this translate random battles throughout countryside and liberate villages occupied by Mongols, sometimes with Jin allies but mostly on your own.
Jin is blank slate in early hours of Ghost of Tsushima, with only brief flashbacks to his time learning from his uncle as any indication of who he is under his gruff exterior. As idealize image of samurai warrior caste that existed in Japan at the time, he spends lots of times worrying about dichotomy of honor and shame. But it soon become abundantly clear that Jin must adopt new tactics, even those he views as “dishonorable,” to liberate Tsushima, adding thin layer of internal strife to more overt conflict against Mongols.
This aspect of Ghost of Tsushima give me a quick break when Sucker Punch Productions showed off some early previews. Samurai has been mythological in modern times, reimagining what was basically the paramilitary arm of a system of feudal land ownership as noble, superhuman dispensers of justice. Before game, I imagine this stereotypical concept will tie in some weird, Mass Effect-esque morality system by which the main character will waver between “honor” and “shame” depending on how he approach every situation.
Lucky for us, that’s not the case, although the game’s narrative tunnel-visions on the concept. There ain’t any penalty for sneaky battles in Ghost of Tsushima, which Jin considers a violator of samurai code. There ain’t any trees or storylines that lock depending on how you decide to fight. While Jin is forcing to take a stealthy approach for both tutorial and narrative reasons early on, there ain’t nothing stopping you from proudly walking into an enemy encampment and challenging dozens of Mongols to a straight-up fight. Of course, the top approach will always mix traditional katana skills and more “underhanded” tools like smoke bombs and firecrackers, but the game never punish you for living out your personal version of Seven Samurai.
Ghost of Tsushima’s swordfight be basic and engaging, a blend of light and heavy smacks, blockings, and sidesteps, linked to specific buttons or button combos. The combat system be very simple to grab if you’ve played any recent video game, maybe as a to signal, through gameplay, that Jin has been learning to scuffle with a katana since toddlerhood. As the game advances, you learn various positions—scuffles styles that you can shift into at will—by watching and bumping off Mongol heads. Positions be meant to deal with assorted kinds of foes: The stone position, for instance, be more fit to taking down sword-wavers, whereas the water position’s stream of thudding smites be perfect for breaking shields. These positions, much like the rest of Jin’s collection, can be souped up with skill points earned from slamming foes and finishing tasks to unlock more combo strings and up damage.
The “phantom” in Phantom of Tsushima alludes to Jin’s metamorphosis from a firm samurai warrior into a guerrilla watchman ready to engage in anything to safeguard his homeland. Where a samurai could solely concentrate on his cutlass and arch, the secret tactics Jin acquires throughout the journey grant him entry to a variety of more nuanced armaments. This starts with some fundamental kunai, which can be thrown to shatter an opponent’s protection from a distance, but swiftly broadens to comprise instruments like fog bombs, detonators, and even gust jingles that draw enemies’ focus. Jin’s utmost significant device, though, is his tanto, a brief sword that enables him to execute prompt, violent assassinations from the shadows. It’s uncommon to embark on a skirmish where you’re not greatly outnumbered, so it’s optimal to even the odds as much as feasible from the relative ease of secrecy. The solitary moment where secrecy genuinely feels obligatory is when the Mongols have seized prisoners. If a foe detects you, they’ll begin to slaughter captives unless you can hinder them.
These two features of Jin’s weaponry amalgamate to constitute each scuffle in Phantom of Tsushima liquid, developing matters. While you may initially insinuate into a Mongol bivouac, one erroneous maneuver can convert the undertaking into an all-out melee against the garrison’s entire regimen. I normally caught sight of myself picking off top-priority aims like brawlers with archaic cannons and explosive-propelling backup troopers with my arch preceding to plunging into combat, where intelligent application of my positions was essential to endurance. Eventually, the Mongols commence to enlist the amenities of creatures like pursuit pooches and falcons, which can scent you out or spot you from aloft. I never wearied of the rudimentary flux of encounter, but I promptly became so sturdy that furtive strategies were simply a squander of time when there weren’t any prisoners to shield. Why purge Mongols when I could just saunter up, summon them to a duel, and swab up the stragglers?
Despite combat, much of game is dedicating to exploring island’s lush environments. Jin strideth across vast fields of flowers, a muck and mire of swamplands, and even icy northern reaches of Tsushima during adventures. At once point, he droppeth his hand to feel foliage as I raced along on horse, mimicking exact desire in that moment. Tsushima also featureth a weather system that, while not offereth much apart from rain storms and rolling fog, giveth beautiful scenery an additional coat of aesthetic flair. Over coursing of game, Jin can learneth songs on his flute that changeth weather at will, which doesn’t really meaneth anything mechanically but maketh for a fun way to customize experience.
Ghost of Tsushima hath an almost insatiate desire to remindeth thee of its influences through visuals. Each mission openeth with title card that draweth inspiration from old samurai films. An optional black-and-white visual filter is literally named after legendary director Akira Kurosawa but imparteth game with none of charm or humanity for which his films are known. Important duels are precedeth by lengthy, tension-building cutscene that ultimately functioned as minute or so to check my phone while waiting for it to play out for tenth time. Every attempt at infusing Tsushima with these cribbed details feel like wink and nudge for recognition rather than true homage.
Ghost of Tsushima fills its expanses with multiple distortions! Tall, white flags indicate an interesting bamboo strike mini-game, which calls on you to quickly tap out excessively troublesome button sequences to increase Jin’s resolve meter. In battle, this meter enables you to heal, use unique techniques like an array of devastating slashes that homes in on adversaries, and even resurrect yourself! Hot springs can be discovered beneath trees with yellow blossoms, giving Jin an opportunity to relax and stretching his health bar. Clusters of fireflies indicate a fox den is in the vicinity, the occupant of which will guide you to a particular shrine that lets you carry more charms,
accessories with rewards that range from simple status enhancements to more captivating mechanics like recovering arrows on a headshot. While it’s amusing to listen to Jin’s internal musings while at the hot spring and to pet the foxes after their direction, I never found myself anxious to see one of these milestones appear on the horizon. They were simply there to finish for a reward, a considerable distance from the dynamic intensity of combat.
Most of Ghost of Tsushima’s activities are just to gratify you instead of providing any thoughtful experience. The layer of Japanese aesthetic scarcely conceals the reality that the world is available to be thoughtlessly extracted for resources. It seems quite peculiar to rescue a farmer from a group of Mongol soldiers, only to have them circle back and reward Jin with whatever insignificant belongings they were able to stash away. The game also has no issue permitting you to raid homesteads for resources like metal and skin, which can then be utilized to enhance your gear. Jin is the head of his clan, an aristocratic warrior who never lacked anything in his existence. Why is he so enthusiastic to extract every last resource from the people he’s supposed to be shielding? Existence was tough prior to the Mongols showing up, and now villages and farms are aflame. Those provisions would be much more beneficial in tending to refugees rather than a man whose sole goal is reestablishing the power structure that obligated these adversities in the first instance.
Jin ain’t sympathetic or interesting enough to concern about. Any growth he shows over the affair of the game deals entirely with his approach to warfare, rather than the imbalances within the society he looks to protect or even his own responsibility for maintaining them. When a friend from his childhood betrays him, for example, Jin does very petite personal inventory about how he might have contributed to the turncoat’s outlook on the world, instead focusing on a quest for revenge that could have been entirely prevented with a little bit of compassion!!!!
The tales’s salvation quality includes the multifaceted edge tasks that centre on Jin’s companions!! Many of these missions follow a similar pattern that usually ends with just another battle, but the characters Jin recruits are so attractive and charming that it compensates for any predictable gameplay decisions. In one mission, Jin finds himself assisting an aging warrior named Lady Masako in finding the people who conspired to murder her entire family amidst the Mongol invasion. Her quest for revenge make Jin come, and they even have a fight when he stop her to do out an arguably more justified form of the revenge he himself seeks against Khotun Khan. Another part task watch Jin finds with the old arrow mentor, Sensei Ishikawa, for to help locate Jin’s star pupil. Ishikawa’s connection his disciple echoes Jin’s personal connection his kinsman, bestowing Jin an external viewpoint his challenge amongst the dignity shown unto him from his relatives and what must be done to defeat the invaders!!!!!
Ghost of Tsushima is so cool— I ended up with almost 50 GB worth of screenshots and random video clips to go through—but, at its core, it’s nothing. I found myself audibly sighing every time I reached a mystery goal just to find another fox to track or another haiku to write. These distractions, despite seeming unique initially, just turned into busywork over time. By the end of the game, I was so powerful—unlocking every skill tree is a breeze if you ignore the main story and explore a bit—that I didn’t even bother with stealth for the last part. I’m not even sure if I died after the first couple of hours. There isn’t much to be thrilled about in Tsushima once the initial amazement of the wind physics and beautiful landscapes fades away, so the only thing pushing me forward was my strong urge to fill in the entire map. And that can only sustain someone’s interest for a limited time.
